Equality

By Conor Payne The most recent opinion poll shows an enormous 76% support for the upcoming referendum on marriage equality. While this should not lead activists to be complacent – there will be a major campaign by the Catholic right to sow confusion and play on backward ideas – it does show a sea change in attitudes to LGBT people ...

Statement from ROSA to Coalition to Repeal the 8th Conference. ROSA is an anti-capitalist, pro-choice women’s rights group, that Socialist Party women members initiated and continue to play a very active role in. The sickening treatment of a young, migrant, highly vulnerable rape victim (Ms Y) by this state has to be a spur to re-develop and to spread an ...

Under new act women are being treated as vessels without basic human rights While protecting the identity of the woman, all the facts must be immediately made public The current process to determine suicidality must be scrapped Abortion must immediately be made available in cases of rape, incest, fatal foetal abnormalities and where there’s a threat to the health of ...

The misogynistic massacre of Santa Barbara, California is yet another horrific expression of a society that is based on the constant oppression of women. However, this expression of hatred also triggered a massive backlash. A storm of tweets around the Twitter hashtag #YesAllWomen showed not only deep rooted anger but also the potential to build a powerful mass movement against sexism.

The week of a college referendum on whether or not the Students' Union should support gay marriage has seen hundreds of NUI Galway students take a stand against anti-LGBTQ bigotry and fear-mongering. Last Wednesday, hundreds of students crowded around an anti-gay marriage stall set up on the main campus canteen, standing there for hours and showing the homophobic campaigners behind the display that they weren't welcome in the college.

A year has passed since the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar. Last November saw over two thousand people take to the streets of Dublin to express their sorrow as well as their outrage that in 2012 a young woman could effectively be left to suffer and die in pain rather than be granted a termination of pregnancy that could have potentially saved her life.

At a ROSA meeting in October, Igor Iasine as guest speaker spoke about his first hand experience of LGBT repression in Russia, and the CWI’s campaign against this. Igor is active in Moscow, both in the LGBT movement, and in the Socialist Party’s sister organisation, the Russian section of the CWI. In this year, he has been physically attacked twice because of his activities.

The only way the horrific so-called “slut-shaming” that the young woman at the centre of the #Slanegirl incident can be understood, is as a product of the proliferation of sexist objectification of women and the commodification of women’s bodies pushed by corporations and the mass media in the recent period. In the light of the warped and sometimes hateful portrayal of women and women’s sexuality that capitalism has promoted in various guises throughout its history.

Forty-four years ago at a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, a group of transsexuals, cross-dressers, drag queens, lesbians, and gay men fought back against their constant persecution by the New York Police Department and inadvertently started the modern fight for gay liberation. They would not believe the progress that queer people have made in the last 44 years!